World of Tanks (Vol 2)

[Z06George]

You know your team is st when you play as an SPG and you finish the game with double the damage dealt than the second highest scorer and you have more kills than anyone else (5)and yet you still lose because everyone melts away leaving you the last man. It is funny when people are dumb enough to come in close at the end thinking you're and easy kill and you blow them back to the stone age with one shot.

[Beati Dogu]

Shotgunning people with arty is mucho fun. With the quicker arty you can go TD mode and nuke them in the side.

All that jazz said:

Object 263 is a great tank. It's got troll front armour which upsets a lot of people as they think 'meh Russian TD, yum yum lots of HP!" and then "we didn't penetrate their armour/we didn't even scratch them/that one didn't go through!/that one bounced!/ricochet!" . True it has no armour anywhere else so you MUST keep your front to everything which is not much different to any other TD. I play the SU85B as my primary tank so know all about no gun depression, zero gun elevation and no gun arc, so none of this poses an issue for me when playing the 263. You don't see many about because of the M1 and 101 grind but that's nowhere near as painful as people make it out to be.

I agree. The 263 is extremely rare, which is probably a good thing if you have one, as many people don't know how to counter it. It's one of only 3 tanks I still haven't killed yet, although I did one shot one with a Deathstar on the test server ages ago.

[Mastodon2]

Z06George said:

You know your team is st when you play as an SPG and you finish the game with double the damage dealt than the second highest scorer and you have more kills than anyone else (5)and yet you still lose because everyone melts away leaving you the last man. It is funny when people are dumb enough to come in close at the end thinking you're and easy kill and you blow them back to the stone age with one shot.

I've had lights and mediums, and even st heavies like the DW2 bounce shots off my Bishop, then they're like "wtf", giving me a chance to nail them. However, the Bishop (and by extension, the Bert) cannot one-shot much above tier 4 lights and mediums, so it's hard to shotgun in it. I have had success with spamming multiple rounds at incoming enemies as they close the gap, and with the accuracy and ROF, I've cut down some pretty mean tanks by keeping a cool head and a steady hand.

I love the arty hate though, "Skycancer", "No skillz skreb" etc. I find it ironic, on the Xbox WOT forum at least, that people moan about arty, about how much they hate seeing an M53/55 on the enemy team, but no one gives props to arty when it's on their team. Myself and George carried a game the other night, getting 7 kills between us and damaging just about everyone on the enemy team, pinning their surviving tanks behind the church on Fisherman's Bay and allowing the remaining tanks on our side to sweep in and tear them up. Good arty makes a huge difference, and in the game chat I've had plenty of people thanking me, cheering me on when I make a good kill etc, but on the forums it's just "fk SPGs, fk skycancer arty s" etc. Makes me lol even more when I nail someone.

I maintain that it takes a different skill set to what the other tanks do, and Xbox SPGs are all "post Serb's big nerf" that he implemented long ago with the aim of "greatly reducing the number of people playing artillery". From what I gather, this massively reduced accuracy and ROF, and thankfully balanced the game to the point where they could add the higher tier arty that just wouldn't have been possible before.

[bstb3]

Beati Dogu said:

Here's a Su-122-54 game I've just had.

http://wotreplays.com/site/1352604?secret=594d1c81...

The gun was behaving itself and I was able to pull off a few marginal shots, including into the enemy Foch who was their best player. Then I ran into a fully loaded AMX 50 100 and nobody wants to do that. My graphics driver crashed near the end, so I had to upload the replay to see the result anyway. The T-49 player did a nice job cleaning up with his big derp gun.


The T150 was OK, but the aim time is horrible & it's inaccurate too. I much preferred the KV-3 at tier 7. It's tough as nails and has the 122mm gun from the IS to hand out the pain. Both of them are utterly horrible stock and I'd recommend anyone to use free XP to fully unlock them before ever playing them.

The KV-4 isn't great stock either, but fully upgraded it's one tough cookie and more than a match for an IS-3. I've sold it now, but haven't bought the ST-I yet. I already have the top gun for it though (thanks to the IS-8).

Thanks for that, a very nice game and a good feel for the Su122-54. It actually looks ok like that, so thats good . It was very bad luck running into that AMX like that, but at least you took a fair amount out of him allowing the T49 to mop up.

[Beati Dogu]

Thanks. I had to get back & take one for the team there really. I knew I'd wreck the AMX even if I didn't kill him.

I think the best tactic with that TD is probably to stay back and support, then use the mobility & go in & mop up the low health tanks. Just like the SU-122-44 essentially.

Mastodon2 said:

I've had lights and mediums, and even st heavies like the DW2 bounce shots off my Bishop, then they're like "wtf", giving me a chance to nail them. However, the Bishop (and by extension, the Bert) cannot one-shot much above tier 4 lights and mediums, so it's hard to shotgun in it. I have had success with spamming multiple rounds at incoming enemies as they close the gap, and with the accuracy and ROF, I've cut down some pretty mean tanks by keeping a cool head and a steady hand.

I love the arty hate though, "Skycancer", "No skillz skreb" etc. I find it ironic, on the Xbox WOT forum at least, that people moan about arty, about how much they hate seeing an M53/55 on the enemy team, but no one gives props to arty when it's on their team. Myself and George carried a game the other night, getting 7 kills between us and damaging just about everyone on the enemy team, pinning their surviving tanks behind the church on Fisherman's Bay and allowing the remaining tanks on our side to sweep in and tear them up. Good arty makes a huge difference, and in the game chat I've had plenty of people thanking me, cheering me on when I make a good kill etc, but on the forums it's just "fk SPGs, fk skycancer arty s" etc. Makes me lol even more when I nail someone.

I maintain that it takes a different skill set to what the other tanks do, and Xbox SPGs are all "post Serb's big nerf" that he implemented long ago with the aim of "greatly reducing the number of people playing artillery". From what I gather, this massively reduced accuracy and ROF, and thankfully balanced the game to the point where they could add the higher tier arty that just wouldn't have been possible before.

Well I just love being "balanced" by some scrub who's specifically targeting me thanks to XVM from the other end of the map.

Apparently, in the early days of WoT, there was a 5 tier spread in games and some of the top tier tanks were just invulnerable. So they brought in artillery to counter them. Well now things have moved on and we're left with artillery that seems to be able to hit moving targets with their laser or GPS-guided rounds like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlwsoXsjtzo

A better gaming dynamic for arty is like they have in War Thunder and Company of Heroes. Certain units or power ups give the player the ability to call up an arty strike, but it's an area barrage and ranging smoke shells are dropped a few seconds before the HE hits. If you're quick to react, then there's some chance of getting out of the way.

[Mastodon2]

Amazing video! I take your point about XVM-targeting, that would suck. I'd hate to be targeted due to the colour of my name, rather than the SPG aiming for a tank that was of greater tactical importance at a given time.

The PC is perhaps different, but from what I see on the Xbox, it's rarely the case that SPGs are racking up big damage or kill games. I know the splash damage at higher tiers is pretty big (the CGC has a blast diameter of a TOGII*'s length iirc), but this must be tempered by only getting around 2.5 shots per minute, even with a rammer, BIA, vents (if they can be equipped) and the food consumable?

I know a lot of players on the Xbox forum are really excited at the prospect of playing the Bat Chat 155 SPG, they think the burst damage will be insane, but with the worst alpha and worst pen of a tier 10 SPG, and a 75 second reload (or a minute with all the available boosts) it's not going to be an easy vehicle to use.

Not to mention, the huge XP totals needed to add new modules to higher tier arty, and the vast sums needed to unlock the next tank in the line, made even worse by the fact that SPGs get poor XP earning overall as they very rarely spot their own targets, so they have to share on almost all the XP they earn per battle. Whenever I see someone with a tier 9 or 10 SPG I always have respect for that, as it must take herculean patience and dedication to grind those lines.

Edited by Mastodon2 on Friday 21st November 23:33

[Beati Dogu]

How about that Excalibur round though. You notice it can come vertically downwards as it's not limited to a ballistic trajectory like a regular arty round. That means it can hit targets on reverse slopes and in built up areas. In the video you can see the different fuse settings (delayed action, contact, air burst) depending on the target.


Rather oddly, I could buy the tier 9 German GW Tiger if I wanted to, although I only played their arty up to tier 6.

That's because I elited the GW Panther ages ago, when it was tier 6. Then they re-jigged all the arties, bumped the GW Panther up to tier 7 and introduced the GW Tiger P at tier 8. However, because I'd already researched the GW Tiger, it is still unlocked for me. I'd still need to unlock the top gun (67.5K XP) and tracks (25K XP) before I could start the massive 266K XP grind to the tier 10.

I really don't like artillery in WoT though. It's a totally broken mechanic. The top tier ones these days, especially the Conqueror GC, are just ridiculous. In general though, they ruin just about every game they're in & the more of them there are, the worse it gets.

Edited by Beati Dogu on Saturday 22 November 02:34

[bstb3]

Arties rarely have dominating games on the PC either. The problem is it is so highly based on a dice roll (effectively), with such high damage and splash at the upper tiers, that its just extremely irritating when it hits you - because it can easily ruin a game just like that. Now if you get wrecked because someone has outplayed you - great. Well done enemy. If you get wrecked because you make a silly mistake and drive out in front of a load of guns well ok, more fool you and learn from it. But get 1 shotted by a lucky arty strike when you are in cover, well - what is the lesson? You haven't been outplayed, just out lucked, but what can you do differently apart from never ever get spotted?

Tonight for example I was taken out of a game in the first 90 seconds or so by an arty strike in my t3485 - full health to dead in one hit to a tier 6 arty. I was behind a house at the time. There is just nothing you can do to counter that - it's just luck. The same guy could take the same shot 10 times / 100 times and hardly ever one shot again.

It also has such a low skill ceiling, again due to the huge rng influence. Once you know roughly where to position arty on maps it often comes down to that dice roll again - irrespective of your ability. Case in point - On Quickybaby's stream a few weeks ago Peppy (his fiance) plays a game in the tier 10 conquerer GC, her first ever game in arty, and gets the bombardier medal for killing 2 tanks in one shot. QB, with his 25k+ games has never got one.

Now it can be fun, yes, and a change of pace certainly. But when you have been on the wrong end of it several games in a row, especially when it seems you are being singled out, then it's too much. How to fix it, of course, I have no idea. As Beati says it is just mechanically broken with its ability to shoot over obstacles from such ranges - all the tinkering with alpha's, accuracy etc doesn't change that.

Still they are fun to kill

[jimmyjimjim]

Mastodon2 said:

I maintain that it takes a different skill set to what the other tanks do, and Xbox SPGs are all "post Serb's big nerf" that he implemented long ago with the aim of "greatly reducing the number of people playing artillery". From what I gather, this massively reduced accuracy and ROF, and thankfully balanced the game to the point where they could add the higher tier arty that just wouldn't have been possible before.

The main point of the nerf was the nerf; the existing T8 arties got bumped up to t10 with some filler added, plus got nerfed themselves on RoF, accuracy, splash radius, range, aim time, penetration, and flight time.

Mastodon2 said:

I know the splash damage at higher tiers is pretty big (the CGC has a blast diameter of a TOGII*'s length iirc), but this must be tempered by only getting around 2.5 shots per minute, even with a rammer, BIA, vents (if they can be equipped) and the food consumable?

2.5? I wish. 2.5 for the BC 155, maybe, containing the magazine load time, perhaps. Countering that is that it's only a 155mm for damage, so needs to hit with at least 2 of the 4 in the mag to do the same amount of damage as another arty. The Rof for the other T10 arties is : 1.03, 1.13, 1.41, 1.7. Add all the other stuff to improve that, it's not much better.

For someone to be hit twice by a high tier arty - to not take the hint that they're exposed on the first hit...well, they deserve to be hit.

I two shot a Tiger P with the SU-14-1 just now. He had to wait 47 seconds for me to hit him again in the same location.

Singling out? No, I'd say that was him being very bright. He had other locations near him that would have protected him completely.

bstb3 said:

If you get wrecked because you make a silly mistake and drive out in front of a load of guns well ok, more fool you and learn from it. But get 1 shotted by a lucky arty strike when you are in cover.

You weren't in cover, only concealment, obviously. And sixth sense breaks this too - you get spotted, you've plenty of time to move before arty can focus on you and aim.
Also, you made a silly mistake in being somewhere arty could hit, and stationary.

bstb3 said:

Tonight for example I was taken out of a game in the first 90 seconds or so by an arty strike in my t3485 - full health to dead in one hit to a tier 6 arty. I was behind a house at the time.

No you weren't, you were beside one. You didn't consider the angle of fire and where it was coming from, or the splash.

I've one shot a tiger 2 before, 37 seconds in, because he drove an parked in a popular spotting locating. $5 says he never did that again.

bstb3 said:

There is just nothing you can do to counter that - it's just luck. The same guy could take the same shot 10 times / 100 times and hardly ever one shot again.

Better positioning - I bet he could make that shot again, depends where he was positioned. The FV304 EXCELS at this because it can re-position so quickly. One shotting a medium...much more common than a heavy - it's all down to the pen. A good reason to be mobile in a med.

bstb3 said:

It also has such a low skill ceiling, again due to the huge rng influence. Once you know roughly where to position arty on maps it often comes down to that dice roll again - irrespective of your ability.

Yes and no. While the element of luck has gone up, so has the element of skill required, with the longer flights time and worse arcs. A lot of it is timing and practice. I don't see many people having great arty games these days, those that do are the better payers. They just don't have as many good games as they did.

bstb3 said:

How to fix it, of course, I have no idea. As Beati says it is just mechanically broken with its ability to shoot over obstacles from such ranges - all the tinkering with alpha's, accuracy etc doesn't change that.

It doesn't need fixing, it serves a purpose. Currently to counter the plethora of OP but soft TDs. You may have noticed use of arty start to rise again after their introduction.
Pre-nerf, there were maps where a T95 could position itself near base such that approaching it was death for anything coming near, and it could scrape off attackers. I saw so many getting top guns just sitting there one shotting cappers. Bases were essentially impregnable. Arty stops that.

I agree that arty can be OP on (rare)occasion, but it's usually reduced to plinking no more damage than another tank would hit off you. One shotting is probably as rare as ammo racking these days. If I had to do anything to arty, I'd restore it to pre-nerf, but dramatically reduce the alpha damage and pen, to limit it to almost always hitting for the same damage as a tank a tier or two below.

Sorry if this comes across as aggressive, it isn't intended as such.

Edited by jimmyjimjim on Saturday 22 November 04:41

[jimmyjimjim]

Ok, I did just one shot an IS-6 in the SU-14-1. Stalingrad too, which isn't notable for being arty friendly.

It's fairly easy to see the players who are 'arty aware' and who aren't; even before they get hit.

[RobDickinson]

118,000 xp to go for a t28 prot. ffs in that heap of st?

[bstb3]

jimmyjimjim said:

bstb3 said:

Tonight for example I was taken out of a game in the first 90 seconds or so by an arty strike in my t3485 - full health to dead in one hit to a tier 6 arty. I was behind a house at the time.

No you weren't, you were beside one. You didn't consider the angle of fire and where it was coming from, or the splash.

http://wotreplays.com/site/1357492?secret=5b9be9ea...

Well tbh I did consider it, I just didn't properly guess the location of the enemy. Had I known exactly where the arty was and the arc of the shell possible I could have stayed even closer to the house, but I had to assume that so early in the game they were in the usual arty location - which would have been a pretty tough shot to where I was. The shell trajectory must have come in over the lower roof, and my arse in the picture was exposed to that angle a bit - but I had just moved back away from the house a little at the time (say 3-4 seconds before getting hit) to try to keep an angle on the approaching VK... which was the mistake - The AMX13 F3 either has a higher shell arc than I thought, or he was very well advanced in an unusual location. A well timed shot no doubt, but chance of success? Very low I would guess.

Had it been an FV304 then I would have expected the high arc and been much closer in to the building - but then even if a FV304 had hit me it would be ~400 dmg tops assuming a penetrating hit...

But thats also the problem, if you spend the whole game worrying about Arty might be here, might be there, calculating trajectories and probabilities of hits then you either constantly move, exposing to enemy direct fire, or constantly hide. The former is risky, the latter the very thing that arty is supposed to counter...


In the scheme of things a small positioning mistake being punished by being taken out of the game completely is a bit much.

jimmyjimjim said:

bstb3 said:

There is just nothing you can do to counter that - it's just luck. The same guy could take the same shot 10 times / 100 times and hardly ever one shot again.

Better positioning - I bet he could make that shot again, depends where he was positioned. One shotting a medium...much more common than a heavy - it's all down to the pen. A good reason to be mobile in a med.

Yes, but percentages. How many times would he have to try? That's the point i'm trying to make. If he does it pretty much every time then great, but he won't. Some will miss altogether, probably hitting the building and warning me Im being clicked at. Some will splash for varying amounts. Few will be a direct hit and fewer still will be a full HP kill. And there is little as an arty you can do to influence that outcome - as I say it is ultimately a dice roll.

jimmyjimjim said:

bstb3 said:

It also has such a low skill ceiling, again due to the huge rng influence. Once you know roughly where to position arty on maps it often comes down to that dice roll again - irrespective of your ability.

Yes and no. While the element of luck has gone up, so has the element of skill required, with the longer flights time and worse arcs. A lot of it is timing and practice. I don't see many people having great arty games these days, those that do are the better payers. They just don't have as many good games as they did.

I agree that playing arty consistently well requires knowledge of maps, good target prioritization and so on. Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not saying its easy mode or anything like that. What I am saying is that you can be the best in the world at all that, and still get games where you will miss every shot - and other games where you will hit each one and have a good role. Thats because the basic mechanic it has needed to be balanced, but they have done it in such a bad way it has made it far too rng dependent.

jimmyjimjim said:

bstb3 said:

How to fix it, of course, I have no idea. As Beati says it is just mechanically broken with its ability to shoot over obstacles from such ranges - all the tinkering with alpha's, accuracy etc doesn't change that.

It doesn't need fixing, it serves a purpose. Currently to counter the plethora of OP but soft TDs. You may have noticed use of arty start to rise again after their introduction.
Pre-nerf, there were maps where a T95 could position itself near base such that approaching it was death for anything coming near, and it could scrape off attackers. I saw so many getting top guns just sitting there one shotting cappers. Bases were essentially impregnable. Arty stops that.

I agree that arty can be OP on (rare)occasion, but it's usually reduced to plinking no more damage than another tank would hit off you. One shotting is probably as rare as ammo racking these days. If I had to do anything to arty, I'd restore it to pre-nerf, but dramatically reduce the alpha damage and pen, to limit it to almost always hitting for the same damage as a tank a tier or two below.

Sorry if this comes across as aggressive, it isn't intended as such.

By fix I don't mean nerf, remove or anything like that. What I mean is finding a way for it still to have it's role in the game but reducing the rng dependency so that it can be more reliable and at the same time less frustrating to play and play against.

The situation you describe above with the T95 is a good example of how arty should be used - breaking deadlocks and so on. But the problem is you can go from the extreme of hitting him once and killing him outright (have done it in my GW Tiger P), or shooting several times and taking little or no health off him.

To be honest it would be better as you suggest if you could hit more reliably and do less alpha - it would force the camping to relocate and expose to the attacking tanks on your team, while at the same time taking out some of the frustration of waiting 40 odd seconds just to roll again and hope this time the rng gods don't turn you down.


But in any case Arty is certainly not going anywhere so we just live with it. The T-34-85 game I referenced above was a deliberate exaggeration - that hardly ever happens and certainly was the first time in a while it has happened to me, but the fact it can happen is the issue.

Anyways not to worry Jimmy, debate is healthy

[bstb3]

RobDickinson said:

118,000 xp to go for a t28 prot. ffs in that heap of st?

If you think the T25/2 is bad, just wait. I really hope you have the 105mm unlocked on the T28 prot (from the T25AT) because I can't even imagine how painful it would be to play with the 90mm.

[Mastodon2]

I haven't played the T25/2, but I hear it's utterly diabolical. I feel ashamed whenever one kills me

[Beati Dogu]

The T25/2 is perfectly fine. I got 150 kills in 86 games with mine & it survived 46 of those games too.

[MoleVision]

Beati Dogu said:

The T25/2 is perfectly fine. I got 150 kills in 86 games with mine & it survived 46 of those games too.

Agreed, fully upgraded its good

[Z06George]

I didn't know that it was so unloved, is that a case for a lot of that line? I always thought it must be quite good due to its popularity, although I do find tanks on that line easier to kill than mine (I play the T25AT line).

[jimmyjimjim]

bstb3 said:

By fix I don't mean nerf, remove or anything like that. What I mean is finding a way for it still to have it's role in the game but reducing the rng dependency so that it can be more reliable and at the same time less frustrating to play and play against.

The situation you describe above with the T95 is a good example of how arty should be used - breaking deadlocks and so on. But the problem is you can go from the extreme of hitting him once and killing him outright (have done it in my GW Tiger P), or shooting several times and taking little or no health off him.

To be honest it would be better as you suggest if you could hit more reliably and do less alpha - it would force the camping to relocate and expose to the attacking tanks on your team, while at the same time taking out some of the frustration of waiting 40 odd seconds just to roll again and hope this time the rng gods don't turn you down.


But in any case Arty is certainly not going anywhere so we just live with it. The T-34-85 game I referenced above was a deliberate exaggeration - that hardly ever happens and certainly was the first time in a while it has happened to me, but the fact it can happen is the issue.

Anyways not to worry Jimmy, debate is healthy

I'd like to see the reduction in emphasis of the role of rng, too. The BS factor is way too high with it with arty.

The idea of reducing the alpha dramatically is the best I can come up with over the course of many, many games.

It would still allow arty to fulfill its role, but hopefully reduce the amount of whining regarding sky cancer (you can just tell that none of the complainers played pre-nerf!), and it's certainly a better idea than what they did in the nerf.

As it stands, there's a great deal more I'd change in the game before looking at arty (auto-loaders, camo and spotting mechanics, mm, rng, critical hits, etc).

Right, I'm off to go bounce a 203mm off a hellcat....

[RobDickinson]

Mastodon2 said:

I haven't played the T25/2, but I hear it's utterly diabolical. I feel ashamed whenever one kills me

It plays more like a medium. The gun is terribly unreliable, long time to aim and a lot of misses, no bigbig pen or damage.

It does most things below average and nothing well

[bstb3]

Finally....




Getting 2 marks of excellence (85%) didn't seem hard. Getting to the third was horrid, especially the last 5% or so. Still it's done now, and can move on up to the KV3 in peace. Certainly won't be going for 3 MOE on anything else though.

Not a bad tank in the end - not as OP as the old KV1-s by any stretch, but competitive enough in most matches. 229 battles, 407 kills and 141 wins. Can't say I will miss it much, but its certainly not let me down. Bit like my old Honda Accord really...

/shamelessowntrumpetblowingmode off

Edited by bstb3 on Saturday 22 November 22:07